Applying the principles of the book Brace for Impact to the news of the day

About the Book

In Collapse, Jared Diamond explained why civilizations disappeared in the past; in Hot, Flat and Crowded, Thomas Friedman tried to chart a course through the economic and environmental afflictions that imperil our way of life; in Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food, Michael Pollan taught us to worry about our food supply, as did Paul Roberts in The End of Food.

Now, in Brace for Impact: Surviving the Crash of the Industrial Age, Thomas A. Lewis takes the next step, describing and analyzing all the gathering threats to our society’s life-support systems and the inability of our political and economic institutions to save us. With chapters on food, water, oil, electricity, politics and finance, he demonstrates convincingly not only that we can’t win the race against catastrophe, but that we are in fact running the other way. What sets Brace for Impact apart is that after it demonstrates conclusively that industrial society cannot survive the gathering threats, it shows how easily individual families and communities can weather collapse. Our only hope, Lewis writes, is to reject the hopelessness of trying to preserve the industrial world and embrace the promise of sustainable living as families; while there is no way to solve the problem for everyone, the knowledge and technology is at hand to solve the problem for anyone, or any family.

Lewis is a veteran journalist and author who for six years wrote the authoritative “Environmental Quality Index” for National Wildlife Magazine and World Almanac, and who was the executive editor of a 16-book Time-Life Books series on the earth sciences called Planet Earth. He is currently Artist in Residence at the Department of Mass Communication, Frostburg State University in Frostburg, Maryland.

BRACE for IMPACT: Surviving the Crash of the Industrial Age

In Collapse, Jared Diamond explained why civilizations disappeared in the past; in Hot, Flat and Crowded, Thomas Friedman tried to chart a course through the economic and environmental afflictions that imperil our way of life; in Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food, Michael Pollan taught us to worry about our food supply, as did Paul Roberts in The End of Food.

Now, in Brace for Impact: Surviving the Crash of the Industrial Age, Tom Lewis takes the next step, assembling all the gathering threats to our society’s life-support systems and documenting the inability of our political and economic institutions to save us. With chapters on food, water, oil, electricity, politics and finance, he demonstrates convincingly not only that we can’t win the race against catastrophe, but that we are in fact running the other way. What sets Brace for Impact apart is that after it demonstrates conclusively that industrial society cannot survive the gathering threats, it shows how easily individual families and communities can weather the collapse. Our hope, Lewis writes, is to reject the hopelessness of trying to preserve the industrial world and embrace the promise of sustainable living; while there is no way to solve the problem for everyone, the knowledge and technology is at hand to solve the problem for anyone.

Lewis is a veteran journalist and author who for six years wrote the authoritative “Environmental Quality Index” for National Wildlife Magazine and World Almanac, and who was the executive editor of a 16-book Time-Life Books series on the earth sciences called Planet Earth. He is currently Artist in Residence at the Department of Mass Communication, Frostburg State University in Frostburg, Maryland.